inside wall and knocked. As there was still no answer I tried to open the door, and found that it was locked. A flight of steps, narrow and rude, ran up the side of the wall to some upstairs rooms, and I sang up the stairs. As this final shout produced no better result than the others, I made up my mind to waste no further time, but to fill my tank with petrol and leave the money on the counter. But even as I searched for the liquid, I kept marvelling at the strange silence of Anne Caldershaw's shop. There was not only no one to buy, but there was not even anyone to sell. The circumstances were odd in the extreme, and I scented the unexpected in the damp air.

My part of the adventure--as it seemed--was to fill my tank and get the Rippler ready to start. Whether Destiny, who was arranging details, would permit her to get under way, or me to reach Clankton in time for dinner, was quite another matter. However I was actor and not author, so I fulfilled my part--my appointed part, I presumed--by searching for the petrol. I soon discovered the orthodox red case, and having unscrewed it with some difficulty, I walked back to the car, which stood, some little distance away, directly in front of Anne Caldershaw's shop. It took me some minutes to fill up, but during that time I did not hear a single sound. And yet, as I conjectured, while replacing the cap of the tank, there must be some house or houses about, since the shop argued customers. Perhaps when I turned the corner--for the shop stood just on the angle of the road--I would find a collection of cottages, not likely to be so deserted as Anne Caldershaw's emporium.

Shortly the tank was filled, and after seeing that all was ready to start, I took the empty can back to the dark house and placed the necessary money on the counter. I would have shouted again, but that it seemed useless, as apparently no one was about, for my former cries would have awakened the dead. For one or two minutes I stood in the darkness listening for some sound in the house, and stared through the open door at the streams of light from the acetylene lamps of the Rippler. There was something very weird about the situation.

Suddenly I heard a soft faint moan, which seemed to come from behind the locked door at the back of the shop. On the impulse of the moment and with rather a grue--as the Scotch call it, for the sound was sinister and unexpected--I sprang forward and gripped the handle of the door. To my surprise, the moment I twisted it the door opened at once, and yet I swear that it was locked when I had last tried it. I looked into a dark room, and could see faintly to the right a barred window, 

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